Grassroots News & Progressive Views

There is no greater threat to democracy in the United States than voter fraud. I am not, however, referring to the ballot box stuffing variety envisioned by the purveyors of online paranoia.

It’s the logic behind the claims on this subject being made by the President and his minions that counts. They all lead to the same conclusion: some people’s votes are more valuable than others.

Donald Trump admitted as much during an astonishing interview with ABC News by asserting that none of the claimed fraudulent voters cast ballots on his behalf. Nevermind that arrests in the 2016 elections involving actual presidential ballots involved people trying to cast votes for the GOP candidate. [Read more…]

For the life of me, I cannot understand why there is still going to be an inauguration later this week. The papers regaled us this past weekend – and practically every day – with more and more dishonesty emanating from the President-Elect. The fact checkers are on overload, checking the lies that are being told and yet nothing – absolutely nothing – is being done to prevent this monster from ruining our country. [Read more…]

In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. attended a real estate conference, where he stated that

Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.

As it turns out, that may have been an understatement. Human rights lawyer Scott Horton, whose work in the region goes back to defending Andrei Sakharov and other Soviet dissidents, has gone through a series of studies by the Financial Times to show how funds from Russian crime lords bailed Trump out after yet anther bankruptcy. The conclusions are stark. [Read more…]

Serious People are claiming that news accounts about Russian meddling in US elections are somehow equivalent to the Weapons of Mass Destruction stories peddled in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq. Or a liberal version of the group-think on the Trumpian right about millions of illegal aliens voting for Hillary Clinton.

And then there are others on the right, like the Heritage Foundation, who would have us believe the special relationship between two oligarchs is somehow a good thing. They find much to admire about having a strongman in charge, as opposed to an imperfect democracy.

The reluctance of the FBI/Homeland Security report to disclose sources and methods along with the Obama’s administration’s reliance on the (often meaningless) tactic of diplomatic expulsions as the public side of their response to Russia are cited as reasons to doubt the official account.[Read more…]

Historically, tyrants have tried to control the press using 4 techniques that, worryingly, Donald Trump is already using.

1. Berate the media and turn the public against it. Trump refers to journalists as “dishonest,” “disgusting” and “scum.” When Trump lies – claiming, for example, “massive voter fraud” in the election, and that he “won in a landslide” – and the media call him on those lies, Trump claims the media is lying. Even televised satires he labels “unfunny, one-sided, and pathetic.” [Read more…]

Editor Note: This article was originally published on March 15, 2016. The effort to erode women’s reproductive rights and access to health services here in San Diego was one of the under-reported stories of 2016.

The County of San Diego and the City of El Cajon are considering a proposed settlement with anti-choice crisis pregnancy centers, amounting to a pledge not enforce the Reproductive FACT Act.

In response, local pro-choice activists are presenting El Cajon City Attorney Morgan Foley and San Diego County Counsel Thomas Montgomery with petitions signed by 25,000 Californians urging them to enforce the letter and the spirit of the law.

NARAL Pro-Choice California, UltraViolet and Courage Campaign have been gathering signatures since the anti-choice organizations offered to remove local authorities as named defendants in lawsuits if they agree not to apply the law. [Read more…]

‘Presidents, Republicans and Democrats, have understood that our goal must be to reduce the number of nuclear weapons, not expand them.’

By John Queally / Common Dreams

Sen. Bernie Sanders has made it known that Donald Trump should not go unchallenged by his congressional colleagues as troubling comments by the President-elect about nuclear weapons this week sparked alarm across the United States and the world.

Following an initial out-of-the-blue tweet Thursday saying the U.S. should “expand” its nuclear arsenal followed by “clarifying” remarks Friday to MSNBC in which Trump said, “Let it be an arms race,” Sanders responded: “It’s a miracle a nuclear weapon hasn’t been used in war since 1945. Congress can’t allow the Tweeter in Chief to start a nuclear arms race.” [Read more…]

When researchers show experimental subjects a photo or phrase that reminds them of terrorism, war or death, this triggering actually changes voting preferences and political opinions among the study participants, as confirmed in several experiments going back to the early 1970s. Specifically, research subjects preferred authoritarian figures over more knowledgeable or skilled politicians when they had previously been primed with visual or verbal cues (photos of bombings say, or World Trade Center or 9/11) related to violence or threat, whether the politicians were real-life political figures or invented ones. Solomon and his colleagues apply terror management theory in a forthcoming chapter in a book explaining the Trump election. [Read more…]

Oil and natural gas aren’t just a part of Russia’s economy, they are the economy. Up until 2014, oil accounted for 50 percent of revenue going into the budget. As long as oil and gas prices were high, Putin was able to float along, using oil profits to prop up the Russian economy and his own popularity. But as oil and gas fell, so did Putin’s ability to pretend that his policies were bringing improvement. Since 2014, the value of the ruble has plunged to a third of its former value against the dollar.

The reason is the same as the reason the coal industry is going under: fracking. Fracking for oil and natural gas has filled the US market to overflowing. It’s the reason that gas is $2 at the pump, the reason that the largest coal companies in the world are bankrupt, and the reason that over 160 oil companies have also gone bankrupt this year. Prices are so low, companies and countries that depend on fossil fuels for revenue are feeling a huge squeeze. [Read more…]

On Friday afternoon, the Washington Post dropped a bombshell of a story making the claim that disinformation/hacking efforts during the 2016 presidential campaign were aimed at supporting the candidacy of President-elect Donald Trump.

On Saturday, the New York Times took it a step further, reporting that the Russians had also hacked the Republicans’ data, but didn’t disclose it out of antipathy to the Clinton campaign.

At that point the domestic political universe as I know it collapsed. (Some) Republicans became overtly pro-Putin. (Some) Democrats called for a new Cold War. And the conspiracy-driven quadrant of the internet universe collapsed into a heap. [Read more…]

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The Safety Pin

Many Resistance Groups have stood up against the horrible events in Charlottesville and have reacted against the unacceptable response of our President. It is now our turn in North San Diego County to show solidarity with our brothers and sisters in resistance to protest the white supremacist movement.